Circus Fists

ME AND THE Old Man had a most violent row whilst the _Sea Girl_
was tied up at the docks of a small seaport on the West Coast.
Somebody put a pole-cat in the Old Man's bunk, and he accused me of
doing it. I denied it indignantly, and asked him where he reckoned I
would get a pole-cat, and he said well, it was a cinch _somebody_ had
got a pole-cat, because there it was, and it was his opinion that I
was the only man of the crew which was low-down enough to do a trick
like that.

This irritated me, and I told him he oughta know it wasn't me,
because I had the reputation of being kind to animals, and I wouldn't
put a decent skunk where it would have to associate with a critter
like the Old Man.

This made him so mad that he busted a bottle of good rye whiskey
over my head. Annoyed at such wanton waste of good licker, I grabbed
the old walrus and soused him in a horse-trough--us being on the docks
at the time.

The Old Man ariz like Neptune from the deep, and, with whiskers
dripping, he shook his fists at me and yelled, "Don't never darken my
decks again, Steve Costigan. If you ever try to come aboard the _Sea
Girl,_ I'll fill you fulla buckshot, you mutineerin' pirate!"

"Go set on a marlin-spike," I sneered. "I wouldn't sail with you
again for ten bucks a watch and plum duff every mess. I'm through with
the sea, anyhow. You gimme a bad taste for the whole business. A
landman's life is the life for me, by golly. Me and Mike is goin' to
fare forth and win fame and fortune ashore."

And so saying, I swaggered away with my white bulldog, follered
clean outa sight by the Old Man's sincere maledictions.

Casting about for amusement, I soon come onto a circus which was
going full blast at the edge of town. I seen a side-show poster which
said, _Battling Bingo, Champion of the West Coast._ So I went in and
they was considerable of a crowd there and a big dumb-looking mutt in
tights standing up in a ring, flexing his arms and showing off his
muscles.